The top 5 best and worst-performing Miami housing markets in Q1 2017

byJoe WardApril 18, 2017

Home sales are slowing down in the Miami area, but there are a few areas that are bucking the trend.

First-quarter sales figures showed that Miami-Dade had 5,939 sales closing so far this year. That’s down 14 percent from Q1 of last year, when 6,906 homes were closed on, according to a data analysis by Gridics, a hyper-local real estate data firm.

The slowdown in home sales is having the biggest impact in some of the area’s most famous and luxurious neighborhoods. Gridics ranked each Miami community by home sales, and many areas that previously drove the city’s housing gains are now at the bottom of the list.

Downtown Miami and Key Biscayne, for example, had a 30 percent and 31 percent drop off in home sales this quarter, respectively. Other communities that didn’t fare so well in the first quarter include: South Beach (-18 percent), Coral Gables (-11 percent) and Venetian Islands (-27 percent).

Why are those areas seeing housing sales slow down? For one, those are some of the areas where high inventory is reducing demand for available units. The record inventory problems are also causing home prices to fall in some areas. Consider that some luxury markets like Pinecrest, Surfside and Bay Harbor Islands saw an increase in home sales but a decrease in median asking price in the first quarter, according to Gridics.

Another factor hurting home sales in Miami’s luxury markets: the disappearance of cash buyers, who are typically investors and foreign buyers. There was a 20 percent dip in cash sales in February when compared to the same month in 2016. Cash sales are down by 25 percent since 2014.

Here are the top 5 best and worst-performing markets for home sales in Q1: